The Swarm (1978)

Contained in the Book of Revelations is a prophecy about a dreadful pestilence, which, when unleashed on Mankind, will bring such pain and suffering souls will beg the very mountains to fall upon them and smother the agony that is their miserable lives. That’s right: it’s the 1978 motion picture, The Swarm, produced and directed by Irwin Allen.

Welcome to Drive-in Cinema. Who knew an actual motion picture would violate The Geneva Convention and be quoted frequently in the legal underpinnings for Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo and the Cheney admini—I mean, Bush administration. In case you’re unfamiliar with The Swarm, and all the drama I’m conjuring up about its lack of…uh…being a good movie, first orientate yourself with this 1978 trailer:



What makes torture appealing is the mere threat of torture: dangling the electrodes, the knife, the gun barrel in front of the victim, taunting the helpless with vicious pain. "It’s not just a movie. It’s real. It’s coming!"

Look. On its surface, The Swarm has a great premise. After all, in the 1970s anything under the sun that could trigger a disaster, either natural or manmade, proved ample fodder for a disaster flick. Growing up in Las Vegas, news of the swarms from South America approaching up towards Texas was alarming to me, and the sensation of deranged bees infiltrated Nightly News headlines, Reader’s Digest features and the glossy pages of the National Geographic magazine. With such a scenario you can't blame Irwin Allen, father of the disaster flick, from taking this and running it to the bank. It worked with a rouge wave capsizing an ocean liner, and a raging fire consuming the world's tallest skyscraper--why not mad killer bees taking out the greatest military force on earth? (No. Not the Romans. The U.S. Army!)

But what God hath wrought, let Man put asunder, and thus falls another great story to terrible plotting, stagnant direction, stilted scripting and overwrought acting. How gawdawful is it, really, you ask?

Have you ever read Vogon poetry? (Never mind.) Just watch the following scene, as the main characters battle awkwardly through layers of exposition and anglo-saxon machismo. [Warning: it’s coyote ugly, meaning you’ll chew off your own paw to get away from this clip, so pass the ketchup.]



Remember Michael Caine from The Man Who Would Be King? Richard Widmark from The Bedford Incident? Katherine Ross from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? I wonder how the conversation with their agents went after this screenplay arrived in their respective mailrooms...

Michael Caine: Sidney, you bloody twit! I will not do this rubbish. This dialogue isn’t worthy of a one-armed monkey robbing a bloody bank.

Sidney: They're offering you 10 million dollars, Mickey.

Michael Caine: I’ll do it.

How the mighty and talented are fallen. (For all you folks cross-referencing at home, see Jaws 4.) For extraordinary play-by-play of the movie's plot, go visit The Monster Shack. See ya later, at the drive-in theater.

"The Fiend of Dope Island" (1961)

Welcome back to another installment of Drive-In Cinema.

Say what you will about the lack of truth in advertising. Guaranteed, what you’re about see in the following trailer is exactly what you’ll get in the 1961 crime drama motion picture “The Fiend of Dope Island”.

The plot centers on a megalomaniac of a small Caribbean island, who uses the local natives and his henchmen to grow and ship marijuana. When he becomes bored with his empire, which he treats like his footstool, he summons a beautiful nightclub singer from the mainland to be his love-toy, but when she falls for his second-in-command…

Well, I think you can guess where all this is headed. For a more detailed synopsis of the plot, go to TCM.

But why have me waste words on this. Here’s an eloquent review written by Mark Shanks of Oregon for Amazon.Com, which gets to the point:

“OK, this one takes the all-time prize for over-the-top, pure wild-man scenery chewing. In fact, as the case itself claims, Bennet doesn't just CHEW the scenery, he swallows it whole! It begins with our "fiend" pulling out his whip (any more obvious Freudian symbolism would be pointless) and dealing a few lashes to someone because......hey, he don't NEEEED no steeeekin' reason! As he proudly proclaims, he owns EVERYthing on the island! And since his "staff" is about the most lame-brained crew this side of the Three Stooges, he's a busy man, whippin' everyone and everyTHING in sight. But that's before the girl arrives, and then he REALLY goes berserk! Great fun - I can't recall EVER seeing such vein-popping, chest-thumping, rip-roaring hyper-machoism. Sets a new standard - makes John Agar in "Brain From Planet Arous" look as if he were on Thorazine. You HAVE to see it!”

Here’s what Mr. Shanks means. Watch this:


(Thanks to SabuCat Trailers for the clip!)

Enough said? If you'd like to buy a copy of this movie (which comes with another equally terrible film, Pagan Island, as a double feature drive-in delight), go to Amazon.Com.

See ya later, at the drive-in theater.

"Motorcycle Gang" (AIP 1957)

It’s not the drive-in really, not unless you get to enjoy truly bad cinema. Never mind that crap you get today that sincerely disappoints one’s soul, like “Monsters V. Aliens” and “Land of the Lost.” These films were made by the cream of Hollywood’s crop. Expectations are high. (Or were…)

What I mean by bad cinema are the films crafted by individuals and companies where no lofty expectations are held, where the cream doth not rise, but settles, congealing into a blackened sludge on the bottom. Such films tickle our fancy. How can someone be so openly gawdawful, so brazen in his or her ineptitude?

“Oh dear God, what were they thinking…?”

On today’s installment of Drive-in Cinema, let’s take a peek at 1957’s Motorcycle Gang. (Thanks to SabuCat Trailers for the clip):



Was that fun? What did you think of that body throw John Ashley gets? The next guy that pulls a gun on me in a dark alley…I will seriously not try that on him. ‘Cause I’ll get shot. Better just cough up my wallet…

More or less Motorcycle Gang is a teenage angst film, typical of those crafted by American-International Pictures (A.I.P.…ask for them by name.). The plot is simple: a kid trying to go straight is challenged by a ne’re-do-well friend from his past. This all centers, of course, on motorcycles, which at the time of this film’s conception, were a popular item among the youth, along with hot rods, and were seen as symbols of rebellion against all that was good about America. Oh--and the love a woman is at stake here, too. Girls, like motorcycles, were a popular item among 1950s youth and too were seen as symbols of rebellion against all that was good about America.

For a complete synopsis of the film and credits try here at TCM. If you'd like to buy a copy of the movie, you could try here, or Amazon.Com.

The Alexander Film Company

What I know about the Alexander Film Company could barely fill a small popcorn container. Frankly, there isn’t a comprehensive source of information about AFCO out on the Internet, just a plethora of bits and pieces, here and there, but enough to cull a generalized picture of this company and its functions.

I do know AFCO celebrated its 90 anniversary last year, and produced most of the drive-in intermission commercials and clocks seen by drive-in goers throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which is of great interest to me. At Brian Light’s Drive-In Theater Workshop I found a 1998 article penned by a former employee of AFCO, Sebastian Speranza, who sheds some light on this process:

“On-screen people were usually local folk, but again, there were times when they were brought in from other places. I even had a hand in bringing in some people. There was a fellow, Gordon, from Colorado College that had a super voice and I urged him to come in and audition. He did, and was hired for a bunch of [voice overs] for drive in trailers. A singer I did vocal arrangements for, Bonnie Boyd, was also brought in for screen testing and she wound up doing some things also.

About sound recording/transfers. We had a number of machines. Most of the V.O. stuff was recorded on a Fairchild 1/4 inch tape machine at 15 ips. using their Pic-Sync Signal technology. Paul, or Wes, or whoever, would show up every morning about 9:30 AM and take his place in the booth. All the copy to be read was on individual cards. There was a special clock behind the mike that the announcer would set 5 or so seconds before the zero mark and then at zero would read the copy and hopefully get it in before the 10, 20, 30 or 60 second mark was reached! These guys were good and there were seldom a problem.

The way sound tracks are placed on film, there was a 1 1/2 second delay before the sound started and it ends a 1/2 second before the end of the film. (Due to placement of optical sound pickup head in the projector and splicing.) This was also indicated on the timing card that the announcer had in front of him as shaded areas. These V.O.s were all destined for the drive-in "clocks" and trailers ... AFCO's bread and butter…”

To further illuminate our subject, take a short peak behind the scenes with in the AFCO promotional film, circa 1950s:



While AFCO wasn’t the only producer of these drive-in theater trailers and intermission clocks, it was by far the largest. Tim Brown lays out the genesis like this:

“In the late 40s, the Armour company produced a trailer (short advertising film) promoting their hot dogs. This was distributed free of charge to drive-ins that sold Armour hot dogs and was run during the intermission break between features. A rapid increase in hot dog sales was immediately noted by all who ran the film and soon requests for the trailer poured in from operators all over the country. Other manufacturers followed Armour's lead and soon several product trailers were in the hands of the drive-ins. This further increased concession sales and began the trend to advertise on the screen during intermission.

“The Alexander Film Company was engaged in selling screen advertising to local merchants. This involved a nationwide network of salesmen who called on various car dealers, drug stores, laundrys, banks, service stations and the like, to sell them advertising on local screens. This salesman also negotiated contracts with individual drive-ins, for their screen time.

After production, the films were sent to the local theatres, and screened according to a particular schedule (in the mid 50s, this was usually a one week flight, but longer times evolved). Alexander paid the theatres directly for their screen time. This amount varied according to the size and location of the theatre, which reflected the number of people who would potentially see the ads. After the run, the films were requested to be returned to Alexander. It was a popular way for theatre operators to generate extra income.”

Here’s a sample of some intermission ads, supposedly produced by AFCO:

Keitz & Herndon

There seems to a joyful consensus among animation and drive-in bloggers about Keitz & Herndon, an animation studio out of Dallas, Texas, operated by Larry Herndon and Roddy Keitz. I have an affinity for their style of animation that reminds me of the old UPA style from the late 1950s and 1960s, which might explain my attraction to the old Mr. Magoo cartoons I watched on television after school, as well as the many cold war cartoons found in education films aimed at deterring any and all childhood fears of thermonuclear annihilation.

Of Keitz & Herndon's animation, they produced two of my favorite snackbar commercials, whose animation and music styles take me way, way back to the drive-in. The first is a Dr. Pepper commercial, well fitted with a hip brassy jazz orchestration, and peppy animation evoking the heyday of drive-in theaters, jazz and animation.



The second is what I call the "Witch Doctor" snackbar ad.



Now, I know that this ad isn't exactly politically correct, for obvious reasons. But let's not froth at the mouth. We're adults. Let's just examine it as a pop culture artifact. And a wonderful artifact it is. Note the music, a jazzy-Tiki Club variation that was indicative of the exotica music popularized by the likes of Denny Martin and Les Baxter, to name a few. Both of these snackbar ads are pitch perfect for the monotonic drive-in speakers. Hearing them ring out in the night air makes one swoon.

For far, far more on Keitz & Herndon visit a great blog and by his book, CARTOON MODERN: STYLE AND DESIGN IN FIFTIES ANIMATION.

"Variety Show" (1957)

"Variety Show" is the granddaddy of drive-in theater intermission clocks. This 1957 short film was the creation of Filmack Studios, who also created the 1953 granddaddy of indoor theater snackbar commercials, "Let's All Go To The Lobby", the most famous snackbar commercial...ever. What remains over fifty years later is something memorable and a delight to watch, again and again.

What makes this work? Well...variety, for starters. Having the food come out and literally dance for our entertainment, as in this circus motif guided by the ringmaster announcer, is amusingly simplistic. Aided by the light breezy easy-listening music, the hot dog jumping into the bun, the tight rope waking candy bars, the tap-dancing soda, the marching ice cream--they're all mesmerizing. Whether or not it drove many adults to hunger is unknown, but one can imagine little kids in backseats watching the funny snack foods cavorting about on the screen and giving Mom and Dad some verbal nudging to get something from the snackbar.

For more information on Filmack, and their products, including the aforementioned classics, visit their website.

For a fantastic 2006 article on the subject of Filmack please visit J. Theakston's blog.

Ice Age & Transformers (Redeux)

We're trying something new. Video blogging. I'm using my wife's camera, so bear with me as I struggle to use this technology in a creative way.

Nonetheless, here's our night at the drive-in, on the hottest day in recorded history in western Washington. Over 114 degrees it reached, just hours before our arrival. Box office temps were in the low nineties.

Drive-In Rituals

When she learned that the new Transformers movie was coming out this summer, my seven-point-five year old daughter sat down and composed a to-do list of preparation for our eventual going-to-the-drive-in-to-see-it. Then she promptly hung it up on the refrigerator:
pillows, blankets, soda, hamburgers, bug spray, pop corn, clean car, get candy, take flip-flops...

My daughter’s list was spontaneous, without prompting or help by me, or older sisters, and it made me smile. Getting ready for the drive-in when I was young was tantamount to a religious ritual, much the way a parachutist will pack his chute, Fox Sports will lead up to the Super Bowl kick off, or that guy you work with and his friend Steve prepare for their annual Oscar party.

An early memory I have is my father washing our station wagon in the driveway on the afternoon before we saw The Poseidon Adventure at the Vegas 4 Drive-In. I remember every door open and the tailgate down as my mom vacuumed out the interior and ever since then I've always associated going to the drive-in with dutiful preparation.

When you’re a kid, you have a personal responsibility to gather your supplies, and for me this entailed picking out the right pajamas to wear, grabbing my pillow and blanket, and making sure my butt was in the backseat when Dad said it was time to go. (No, we didn’t have seatbelts that I remember, and if we did…please, who wore them? It was the 70s!) Our red metallic Coleman ice chest we used for camping was loaded with chilled Pepsi on ice, and not those plastic bottles you get today. These were the long neck glass bottles that you needed a bottle opener to pries off the metal bottle cap. Say what you will about the convenience and safety of plastic, but glass bottles held the cold better and the taste was superior. (OK, mostly because they used pure cane sugar as a sweetener instead of today’s high fructose corn syrup. You can re-experience this retro flavor by trying Pepsi Throwback this summer, if you can still find it. Vastly superior taste.)

On our way to the drive-in we’d stop at The Pizza Hut on Decatur Avenue and pick up their Supreme Pizza on their traditional thin crust, and sometimes their Thick and Chewy (before Pan Crust’s greasy mess). Instead of boxes, the pizza was wrapped in a paper teepee, of sorts. Whenever I see Pizza Hut I always remember that fond association with the drive-in, and if I get a thin and crispy supreme pizza, its familiar taste resonates with me. Other than that, the Pizza Hut franchise is bollocks, having gone the way of overpriced franchise restaurants like Applebees and Outback.

Jump ahead a few years, now living in a new state, having new drive-in theaters to experience in the city of Yakima, Washington. Instead of pizza, we’d make pizza boats on French bread using spaghetti sauce, chopped onions, green peppers, hamburger, Canadian bacon, pepperoni and lots of cheese. Very filling and very scrumptious. We’d wrap them in foil, place them in a box. On our way to the drive-in, we’d stop at 7-11, or the AM-PM and get 32oz drinks, which at the time were a novelty item, and for me, the most soda I’d ever seen personalized for one person. (Today, 32 oz drinks are small compared with the 44oz and the jumbo 88ozers, if such a creature exists.)

Pillows and blankets and wearing pajamas obviously fall by the way side when you get older, but when you have your own kids, you take your own traditions, implement them, and gradually they evolve into new ones. While I was always envious of families who hit McDonald’s on the way in with their bags of fires and hamburgers, in the hot summers in the Yakima valley fruit basket it became a family tradition to pack in our ice chest with bags of big, fat bing cherries. Oh so crisp and delicious cold. We’d also pack nectarines and peaches to go with our pizza boats. And who among us NEVER stopped at Safeway and grabbed their candy bars that were always on sale two or sometimes three for a dollar? For me, it ain’t the drive-in unless I have my Snickers bar. On a recent venture to the drive-in my seven year-old and I packed root beer on ice with a big bag of Rainer cherries, popped a sack of popcorn, Nathan hot dogs (no mustard for her), jo-jo fries and chicken tenders. No sense starving, you know. We're Americans.

"Did you clean the windshield?" A lot of time this really isn’t an issue. I hardly remember staying in the car to watch a movie. If I’m not sitting on the tailgate or on a lawn chair, I’m in front of the car on a "bed" constructed out of half a dozen blankets and sleeping bags we packed away in the trunk. But as a matter of protocol I’d make sure the windows were scrubbed clean, inside and out, as I vacuumed out the car.

Prepardness for nighttime weather is a must. Thank goodness we packed light jackets and a blanket the other night as a layer of marine air came in and chilled us down. But right now the Pacific Northwest is pushing into a monster heatwave and with another venture to the drive-in coming up, weather forecasts put dusk temperatures around 94. Yeah. This might mean mucho-on-the-mosquito-repellent that night because all the windows are going to be down (if the little buggers can stand the heat). And mucho-on-the-bottled-water, too.

But you can see this obsession in every car when everyone lines up at the box office each night, the rear window of their cars piled high with folding chairs, blankets, pillows and several excited children. They've come prepared.

Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs & Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Here we are again at the Skyline Drive-In Theater. Tonight’s double feature is Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, followed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. When we left home at 7:15 and stopped at the ATM for the entry cash, the temp was 81 degrees and clear skies. By the time we reached the drive-in forty some miles north, a marine air push covered us in clouds with brisk winds gusting seven to fifteen miles an hour. As you can imagine, it’s not 81 degrees anymore.

It’s a Wednesday, and unlike a Saturday it’s not that busy, for obvious reasons. I know full well that I will not get to bed until 2:30, and must get up between six and six-thirty to get ready for work. (Fortunately I only teach summer school from eight to eleven, so I’ll go straight home and crash.) With a half hour before the Ice Age 3 begins, the field is only filled one-thirds capacity. Lots of kids here and they’re tearing it up in front of the screen, which is an empty field roughly fifty yards long and twenty yards wide. My seven year old is leading the charge out there right now, and she’s my only passenger tonight. My fourteen year-old is at our church’s girl’s camp and the nineteen year old is vacationing with her aunt and cousins in SLC, Utah for a family reunion. They’re not thrilled to be missing out. My oldest went through this a few years back when she was at girl’s camp and missed out on the I, Robot and Spiderman 2 double feature, which was a great line up, you gotta admit.

Right now it’s ten after nine, and with this thick cloud cover, its getting dark extra quick. I’ve heard good things about Ice Age 3. Very good things. But I know very little about the plot. I know Simon Peg voices one of the characters and I’m a big fan of his. If you’ve seen Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, you’ll know why. (And no, I haven’t seen Star Trek yet. But I have met the original Scottie, James Doohan, at a showing of Star Trek III in Tacoma the day after I graduated from High School. I’ll save that story for later. Trekkies will like it. Everyone else will be bored.)

Holy Crap! This big rock just hit my windshield! It bounced off, miraculously doing no damage! Little kid behind us got wild with a pitch. Father apologized profusely.

Oh! Showtime! A female voice is welcoming us. Here we go!

Previews! AstroBoy. And it seems there’s a ‘squeakweal’ to the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. They go to school and meet a new band made up of female chipmunks. Coming this Christmas. My daughter is excited. I’m…indifferent. I didn’t much care for the first film. Maybe this one will be better.

And here’s another preview for Aliens in the Attic. Ever get the feeling this trailer is showing us everything about the movie, leaving no surprises when it hits theaters? This film must really be terrible and the producers are hoping to get as many butts in the seat on their opening weekend before word of mouth spreads.

OK…Ice Age 3 is starting, and there’s Scrat, of course. My daughter is already giggling with anticipation.

10:46. pm. Ice Age 3 is over, and of the three Ice Age films, this was the best, hands down no contest. Wildly imaginative, and jammed packed with humorous sequences, in particular a scene involving a poisonous green mist you mustn’t breathe in. I’ll say no more. Go see the movie if you haven’t. And yes, if you love Simon Pegg, his character, a weasel, is not unlike Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, albeit with more courage, or chutzpah. His part is by the far the centerpiece of affection, and if you like Scrat the squirrel, this movie won’t disappoint you.

Next up is Transformers, the movie my seven year old has been waiting all these past months to see!

Right now they’re showing an old intermission film to open up intermission. The problem I have with this drive-in’s intermissions is that they go to a dark screen for five minutes with no music. Nothing. I’ve always enjoyed having music over the speakers, in this case the car radio, while the movie is on. The field is also very dark, and it wouldn’t hurt to cast some more spotlights over the front half of the field to help the mass of people heading to the bathrooms.

The movie is starting. Oh. It’s a trailer for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. I’m dubious of films that open in August, although The Sixth Sense made such an opening many years back and became an instant classic. Even though it’s from the Stephen Sommers who did the Mummy movies, and it looks to have an epic quality to it, I’ll hold judgment. But history is none too kind… (OK, I know Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby also had an August debut, and it was very, very funny, but still… I’ll shut up.)

2:14. am. OK. I’m home. So, what did I, and my daughter, think of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? (How about that James Doohan story now! It’s pretty cool…)

Yeah. Unlike the first Transformers film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was disappointing. It starts off great, but halfway through it gets very tedious. Very. I can’t stress this enough. It just keeps going and going and going. It’s one adventure after another, and I found myself wanting it to end. That’s not good. I’m at the drive-in watching an explosive action adventure movie. Wanting the evening to end goes against the emotion of going to the drive-in in the first place.

But what’s wrong with one adventure after another? I don’t know, why don’t you go ask The Matrix sequels, huh? As I watched Transformers II I imagined Michael Bay, the film's director and executive producer, horsewhipping the screenwriters into one macho plot evolution after another.

“Let’s do this, then have them go here, then suddenly this’ll happen, and then we jump clear over here, then we’re way up here…”

The problem in coming up with ideas for movies and novels and plays is that it all has to make sense and what you have here are plot pieces randomly glued and stapled together like a four-year old's popsicle stick project. In fact, the friggin’ plot of this movie resembles the friggin’ robots themselves—parts and pieces all jammed together to resemble a movie, and when the movie moves it stomps and clanks and makes terrible noises. And man, that crap gets old, and old fast. Oh, so fast…

How do I know? Transformers’ biggest fan fell asleep in the middle of the endless climatic battle sequence. I tried to wake her. She’d pop her head up, look at the screen, then fall asleep. I was trying to stay awake as well. I kept rolling down the windows to wash cold air over us. But the movie wasn’t making me want to stay awake. (Don’t you think that’s a problem Mr. Bay, or should I direct my comments to Mr. Spielberg, who, of all people, should know better.) I stayed awake because I drove us forty some miles to see this movie, paid my money, and by God I was gonna see it through, clear to the end!

But would I do it again, pay this money, waste this gas, and go all that way to see Hollywood’s idiocy?

Oh yeah. It’s the drive-in, baby! See ya later.

Up & Land of the Lost

8:15. Here we are the Skyline Drive-In on a warm, but windy Saturday Evening. We arrived at 7:40 to a line of about fifteen cars, and more quickly piled up behind us. It's just me and my daughters, ages 19, 14 and 7. This is our first venture to the drive-in since last summer, and this makes my first report from the drive-in nearly four years. I’ve been busy writing other things, and supposed that I couldn't write those things and do this blog at the same time. I’ve decided to poo-poo that notion and write both at the same time.

(It's a little over an hour until show time, and once the movie starts I don’t think I’ll load up much else information until the next day when I can reflect on the movies and the other goings-on here.)

8:30. The crowds are filling up with only an hour until showtime. With only a half an hour after the box office opened, the field is nearly half full. Most vehicles are trucks and SUVs (people are still stuck with these) and that leaves those of us with compact cars and station wagons to take the first four rows. Truth be told about the Skyline drive-in theater is that the grade of the field is a bit lousy. No matter—-

--Oh brother. Someone’s enormously loud car alarm is going off. My heavens. Sounds like we’re about to get skewered by a North Korean missile. Alert NORAD.

Anyway. The grade, or slope of the field, combined with the low height of the screen, makes viewing a bit challenging. Whereas most drive-in fields are flat, and car hills give you significant lift, this drive-in is at a slope, with gravity running downhill towards the screen. The tops of every car, truck of SUV, no matter what row you’re on, comes up to the bottom of the screen. If your kids like to lounge on the top of your car, or you rear-parked your SUV and lift the hatch to watch the show, the people parked behind you aren't going to be happy-campers. (Later, on my way to the snack bar, I see one of the field managers assisting a driver in tethering his lifted hatch a little lower with twine.) As much as I appreciate the fact that this drive-in is open, and reasonably close to where I live, I long for the drive-ins of my youth, of the professionally graded slopes and car hills and tall screens that allow you to park in any spot, in any direction, and view the screen unobstructed.

8:40. Where am I parked? Front row. Center. We have no speakers anymore here at the Skyline. It’s radio, 93.7 on the radio dial. I brought my MP3 player and I’m going to try to enjoy the movie outside the car by wearing headphones, which sounds like heresy. When you don’t have speakers in the field, you miss the romantic sounds of all that music, and the movie, pouring into the air, echoing around, no matter where you are. And this really doesn’t work with car radio, not unless it’s very, very, hot humid night and people have their windows rolled down, and it’s a really loud movie, like Transformers, which has the same decibel rating as a 1972s Who’s concert--

Finally! The hot boiling sun, roughly 94 million miles away, has dropped below the horizon of hills around us. We're only one week after summer solstice. The days are now getting shorter, slowly. But days and nights will be getting warmer, and less windy, but right now the wind keeps the skeeters away. Always come to the Skyline with repellent. Always.

8:49. We have two thick sleeping bags in front of the car, and pillows. I may have to sit inside the car. My seven year-old wants to sit with me, and she can’t because we have no radio outside, except for the MP3 players belonging to me and my 19 year-old daughter. The little one is clingy, and I figured that while she’s young and wants to be with me, I’d better enjoy this while it lasts. So it might be me, and my two youngest piled into the front seat of our Ford Taurus. My middle child probably hates this idea with a vibrant passion.

As I sit here in front of the car, staring across the empty field between the front row and the screen where dozens of kids and parents run around and toss footballs and Frisbees, my two oldest have just performed for me, and the entire front row, a display of sibling rivalry not unlike the song and dance Godzilla and Rodan oft do in downtown Tokyo. What did they wrestle over, giggling and laughing? The remnants of an energy drink, which wound up getting crushed as their hands clasped the can and tugged with all their might. The middle child, who bought the drink at the snack bar ($2.50), won the tug of war, and sipped from the can’s wounds the dripping fluids of intense caffeine.

I'll pause here and express my concern, as I did with my daughter, that the so-called energy component of the drink would have a horrific effect on her. Halfway through the night, I would hear strange sounds emanating from behind me, and that I would find her on top of the car, chittering away in the form of some half-cricket, half-cockroach beast before flying away into the night sky to go live inside underground subways to eat hobo and track worker meat. The movie Mimic? (No one?) Or she could become entranced by the projection light and attack it, crashing into the snack bar. I don't know what movie that would be. (Not Mothra.)

9:12. OK. It’s getting rather darker out. The middle child has taken the youngest to the rest room, so we're not having do this during the first feature: Up, courtesy of Pixar. Good things have been said of this film, which did rather well with the foreign audience at the Cannes Film Festival back in May.

Now...it seems the youngest didn’t need to go to the bathroom. I then explained to her that she hasn’t gone to the bathroom since leaving home, around 6:30. “That’s three hours. You WILL have to go during the first movie, and we won’t take you then, and you’ll pee your pants. Do you want that?”

She shook her head no. Her oldest sister then took her, with the proviso that the second oldest take her during intermission.

But guess what? My daughter came back, apparently afraid of the bathrooms. (She has this thing about foreign bathrooms. So I quickly took her to the men’s room and went into the stall with her. (I turned my back.)

9:24. I've moved into the car, with my two youngest. The oldest is out front on the sleeping bags. Radio music has just stopped. Now the snack bar announcer is welcoming us. The movie will start in seconds--

Here it is. The movie’s starting, but it's too light out. I can hardly see what's on the screen. Some Disney preview for a cell animation film. Something about a talking frog and a dark-skinned princess. Indian? Pakistani? Wow, what’s this other preview? A stork in the clouds… Oh. It’s a Pixar short!

(My daughter is having problems getting a full radio signal on her MP3 player...)

11:17. Intermission! Just went to the bathroom. When I came out of the bathroom (And by the way, two of the three toilet stalls were down and out, leaving one with six urinals) a short old time intermission snipe played on the screen. Black and white. Very old time. I place it circa 1958. But I only caught the end of it.

(During the Pixar short before Up, my oldest daughter couldn't get a clear radio signal on her MP3 player, which she didn’t suffer from last year. I had to go to the snack bar to rent a radio, but there were eight lines, seven people deep, so I went back to the car, changed places with my daughter and I sat outside with my player. I did manage to find a signal by finally placing it under the car behind me.)

11:20. Intermission previews are starting. One for a gerbil secret agent movie. The next is for Ice Age III. Here’s some Adam Sandler comedy-drama with Seth Rogan. It's chilly outside, but I'm wrapped up in a blanket. Girls are snuggled in the car. We’re ready for Land of the Lost. Will Ferrel, make me laugh!

11:29. Showtime!

1:55. We're home now. We got the youngest up the stairs, into the bathroom, then into bed pretty quick. I finished getting the car unpacked while my older daughters headed to bed. The leftover food was put into the fridge, the ice chest with remaining cold soda set on the kitchen floor. Must hurry. We have church at 11:00 am.

Land of the Lost was not great, nor terrible. Just visually interesting enough to keep me awake, and boy did I want to knock off, like my youngest did in the backseat. Will I get this movie on DVD? No. It's simply a weak movie in light of the expectations of the old TV show pairing up with Will Ferrel. You get a sense that the humor was reaching to be more adult that the studio wanted, to keep the PG-13. Think of it like an Adam Sandler booger-fart-penis-betchyourgay comedy with science fiction visual effects. But Up was spectacular. (I laughed far more watching Up than I did with Land of the Lost. Ten to One.) Pixar is batting a 1000 so far. Go see it. Get it on DVD. Out of this world!

Goodnight. See you later at the drive-in.